


Night Watch

by sinfuldesire_archivist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Drama, During Canon, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-21
Updated: 2009-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-03 11:08:44
Rating: Teen & Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8710207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinfuldesire_archivist/pseuds/sinfuldesire_archivist
Summary: Sam’s life feels empty and repetitive. There’s a reason for that - he just doesn’t know what it is.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the Sinful Desire archivists: this story was originally archived at [Sinful-Desire.org](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Sinful_Desire). To preserve the archive, we began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2016. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [Sinful Desire collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/sinfuldesire/profile).
> 
>  **Author's notes:** This fic is part of a 30 Days of Night/Supernatural crossover challenge presented by my friends and fellow writers SylvanWitch and Oschun. What you are about to read is a very loose interpretation of the prompt. Thanks also to SylvanWitch and Oschun for very kindly going over my work prior to posting. As always, I own nothing here and any mistakes are mine. This fic's rating of PG-13 is for very mild language, a couple of blink-and-you-miss-it slash references, and some violence. Finally, I changed the location of the vampire hunt from Alaska to Montana because of Dean's fear of flying and airport security. I just didn't have the inclination to figure out how the boys would bypass that last part when they're on the "Most Wanted" list in at least a half dozen states.

***

 

At twenty-five, Sam was pretty sure it wasn’t a mid-life crisis. Then again, in _his_ line of work…

 

He woke up early.

 

Again.

 

The case had been working _him_ , if anything. This town - which instantly called to mind every conceivable meaning of death even _before_ there was any mention of ghosts - the indifference of time, even _before_ they reached the crumbling Welcome sign - unexpectedly made Sam think of everything he hated about hunting and, belatedly, movies like _The Last Picture Show._

 

Nothing moved here, or, by the looks of it, changed.

 

The first person they encountered, an over-weight, middle-aged man sitting on the small, warped, wooden porch jutting out from the front of what looked like a repair shop, was perched on an ancient chair that barely seemed up to the task he was requiring of it. He was carving something and glanced up only once when Dean said, “Excuse me, sir,” surprised, it seemed, that anyone was speaking at all. Sam felt sweat beading on his forehead - his face was hot. Dean, cool as ever, stood with one foot braced on the bottom step as he spoke to the man. 

 

Sam suddenly wondered how long the old man had been there. A box of wood figures – human or demon, he couldn’t tell – caught his eye then as it sat like a silent companion next to the far side of the chair. Panning left, away from the slow, circular conversation in front of him, Sam saw a row of the hand-carved idols displayed behind the dusty glass window of the shop. Perhaps they had been trying to escape, but, like everything else here, had given up. 

 

Sam continued turning, half expecting to see a tumbleweed blow down the street.

 

All he saw were rundown houses, some even boarded up, and a few classic cars that appeared not to have been driven since they rolled off the assembly line. Once they were away, Dean would have a few choice words to say about that and the fact that the local watering hole was closed because it had been their bad luck to roll in on a Sunday. 

 

Even the young guy behind the motel desk looked like he had no aspirations other than to jerk off now and then to the skin mag he kept hidden under the state tourism brochures. Not like anyone ever came through to take one.

 

The place was a living, breathing monument to despondency and loneliness 

 

And now it was lousy with ghosts.

 

Figures.

 

The waitress at the local diner - Melanie? – said that it only made the local paper because one of the apparitions had literally scared Mavis Buckley to death one morning while she was sitting at her kitchen table eating a cinnamon roll. Mavis’ daughter had seen the whole thing and made sure to tell the bored-looking reporter who showed up at her doorstep that she thought it had been an accident. 

 

The rest of the time, the locals just lived with it.

 

Therein lay Sam’s growing sense of pointlessness. Why not just let them have their ghosts? Couldn’t tell the difference between the living and the dead around here, anyway.

 

But Dean was all about doing the job. Couldn’t start getting soft when they were needed. He’d stopped short of asking Sam what his problem was, though.

 

They’d had some version of that conversation every day for the last five days and always got nowhere.

 

Again.

 

Sam dressed quietly in the dark, careful not to wake Dean, who’d finally dropped off to sleep sometime around 3 a.m. - he knew because he’d still been awake, waiting for some effect - any at all - from the sleeping pill he’d been given by the waitress at the diner who worked what they had started referring to as ‘The Sam Shift.’ 

 

Normally, he wouldn’t have accepted random capsules – it could have been poison, for all he knew - from a virtual stranger, but after nearly five days without sleep, Sam was just desperate and incoherent enough to lower his standards. 

 

The bell rang over the door, a hollow sound announcing Sam’s arrival as he entered the diner.

 

_Helen_ , he reminded himself, glancing at the woman’s name tag as she approached with a menu in hand. It was strictly a formality, as they both knew by now.

 

“The usual?” she asked.

 

Sam studied her face as long as he could without being rude; he couldn’t tell if she was bored, irritated, or just tired. He settled on some combination of all three, smiled a little and nodded, escorting himself to the nearest booth and sliding in quietly, hoping she’d walk away. She was nice enough, sure, but he wasn’t in the mood to explain why his presence there wasn’t an invitation to unload her day on him. Again. Too, he suspected she was a little disappointed that he was there at all, like he hadn’t taken the pill right or something. Her face was etched with concern even though she was perfectly polite as she poured his coffee.

 

“Decaf,” she said. She wasn’t asking.

 

He took a sip, spilling a little, and she was right there with a dish towel, wiping the stain away.

 

“Thanks,” he said, looking up at her, wondering why she was still there. Casting a glance around the room, he noted that he was probably the most likely person to draw her attention; the only other customer had wisely buried himself in a book. 

 

After a few awkward seconds, some of which she spent with a hand suspended over Sam’s shoulder as if she wanted to touch him, she stepped back. Apparently, she’d thought better of it, turned on her heal and disappeared into the kitchen. Sam breathed a sigh of relief.

 

That was close. 

 

She’d wanted to talk, maybe, but Sam knew he was in no shape for that; he’d barely been able to concentrate on anything for weeks, which was part of the reason their case was taking so long. He wasn’t trying to be difficult - God knew he couldn’t wait to get out of this place – but he was lost in a cloud of profound and persistent misery.

 

He’d blame his mood entirely on the damn town and be done with it, except that he’d brought his baggage with him. Hell, sometimes he considered that he’d infected the place with wretchedness himself. 

 

He pondered that as he tore open a packet of sugar, trailing a few granules along the table before he reached his cup. 

 

Truth be told, there were times in the past when, yeah, he sort of hated his life. Maybe he even went through phases when he tried pinning the blame on Dad or Dean, but it never took. That there was no one accountable, no one to answer for his pain, frustrated him most of all. In some distant part of his mind, he knew he’d never be okay, not really, but he’d accepted that as its own closure. Now, for some reason he couldn’t deduce yet, all his years of well-crafted repression were slowly unraveling.

 

He stirred his coffee, watching the sugar dissolve.

 

The other male customer, an older man sporting a worn, brown leather biker jacket, called the waitress over by name. She approached from the opposite side of the counter and the old man pushed his book toward her, finger marking something he wanted her to see. Sam saw her glance quickly at him before she turned her attention back to the passage.

 

Sam licked his spoon absently, then set it on the table.

 

He’d have to tell Dean about the jacket.

 

Turning toward the window, he looked out into the blackness, ignoring as best he could the pathetic reflection looking back at him.

 

Even darkness seemed different here, like if you stepped out into it, you might fall off the edge of the Earth.

 

This, Sam knew, was completely impossible for many reasons, not the least of which was the existence of gravity.

 

Yet, he didn’t feel grounded in the least.

 

He glanced at the tea cup - shaped clock hanging on the wall.

 

4:18 a.m.

 

He should get back soon.

 

Dean would be pretty pissed if Sam wasn’t awake and alert for the fight that was surely coming. 

 

Dean hadn’t said a thing yet about Sam’s brooding, chalking it up to exhaustion. Sam guessed they had a day, maybe two, before he’d have to do some fast thinking and some faster talking.

 

Thing was, Sam didn’t really know what was wrong, but when he went over the problem in his own mind, he found himself using words and phrases Dean was sure to mock, disbelieve or both. 

 

By way of an olive branch, Sam had tried to talk to Dean about his – er – _feelings_ , a few weeks ago, but the conversation dissolved when Sam realized his brother was trying to put the same bandage on it they’d been using all their lives. As he’d futilely tried to explain, this is not the momdadjessicayelloweyeddemon problem. 

 

In some ways, it was far worse; he could neither kill it nor fully ignore it.

 

He tried like hell, that was for sure, but when he knew he was defeated, which was pretty much all the time, he’d roll out of bed and come to a place like this. It was easier to deal with the depression with a cup of coffee and the artificially cheery light of the diner. The more he came here, for example, the more comfort he took in leaving.

 

Still, he carried with him everywhere the surprisingly heavy burden of what was becoming a completely passionless life. 

 

Sacrifice.

 

Honor.

 

Duty.

 

And, if there was time left over and you weren’t dead yet, a little nooky.

 

That was it.

 

That was all.

 

Sam snorted.

 

Dean had perfected the art of living by that creed, or so it seemed. Sam, who had gotten by on the assumption that there was a life and something like love at the end of the line, had started letting go of that hope.

 

He just wasn’t sure why.

 

And he was a little angry at the inevitability of everything; he was suddenly starting to understand he was the universe’s bitch and complaining about it changed exactly nothing.

 

Though sometimes he caught a break.

 

Like Dean.

 

Okay, maybe Dean had dragged him back into this fight against his will, but in his heart, Sam knew he would have been robbed of everything he’d lost, anyway. Fate was just that fucked up.

 

But it had spared him his hunting partner, his brother, his friend.

 

The only person left who understood the hell his life had become and still looked him straight in the eye anyway.

 

Dean.

 

Man, he could be a real pain in the ass sometimes.

 

All that drinking and skirt-chasing…

 

But, he got the job done. 

 

Maybe all that other stuff was a small price to pay for keeping his head in the game.

 

Sam rubbed his eyes, thinking back to the pill he’d taken.

 

_Must be kicking in._

 

He should move.

 

Dean would be worried.

 

Dean would want to know where he was.

 

Hell, he might have even started looking for him. 

 

Sam slowly stood to leave and as he did so, knocked his coffee cup over, breaking it, cutting his hand on the sharp edge left behind by the piece that was missing. He shook his head and blinked rapidly, fighting back the drowsiness that threatened to knock him off his feet where he stood. Clutching his wounded hand to his chest, he was surprised by how much it hurt, but before he had time to look at it, Helen and the old man were at his side.

 

“Sam!” Helen said, alarm cleverly concealed by a string of well-intentioned admonishments as she took his hand in hers and wrapped it carefully in the towel she’d been drying dishes with.

 

“Boy,” the old man breathed, placing a hand over hers to staunch the bleeding. “Get some hot water and bandages, woman. Go on, now!” he said. 

 

She returned a moment later, supplies in hand.

 

They tried to lead him away from the table, to get him to sit down in a chair, but Sam insisted he had to go. Dean was waiting for him.

 

“Poor kid,” Helen kept saying, shaking her head, holding his wrist as the old man cleaned his hand. 

 

Hurry up. He had to get back to his brother. Who knows what Dean might think if he woke up and couldn’t find him. Might even think Sam had left him again. But they didn’t know how protective Dean was or what the Winchesters had come from. It wasn’t their fault they didn’t understand. 

 

“Hold still, boy,” the man said. Then, to the woman he whispered, “He really did a number on it this time. He might need a doctor.”

 

“You can patch it up.”

 

“I don’t know. This one’s pretty bad,” he said, surveying the damage doubtfully. “Might be nerve damage, the wound’s pretty deep.”

 

“A doctor? Are you kidding me? Where do we get one of those, especially one who would come all the way out here to this hole?”

 

Before the old man could protest her choice of words, which he looked like he was getting ready to do, she said more gently, “‘Sides that, how would we explain his _other_ problem?

 

He nodded, disappeared, then reemerged with a tool box. “‘Ain’t nothing I know of can cure what ails a Winchester, anyway,” he muttered under his breath as he carefully threaded a needle.

 

Sam started to sway on his feet and they caught him before he fell, encouraging him once again to sit down. He stubbornly refused, suspicious that they wouldn’t let him go if he did. He looked down at the front of his shirt, bright red with a hand-print of blood.

 

So much blood.

 

From a cut?

 

Sam tried to look at the injury, but Helen had wrapped it once again in a towel. When he tried to shake the towel off, a strong, gentle hand came to rest on his shoulder.

 

“Dean?”

 

“Relax, kid,” The old man said. “We just wanna help you. You know that, don’t you?”

 

Sam stared at the man blankly.

 

“I need to go,” Sam said.

 

Helen and the old man glanced at each other.

 

“Go where, honey?” Helen asked.

 

Sam looked at her like she was crazy. “Back to the motel, of course. Dean and I have an early start tomorrow.”

 

“Okay,” she replied tiredly.

 

The old man leaned in and whispered, “I’ll fix this real quick, then let ‘em sleep. He sure as hell needs it.”

 

She glared at him, “How do I keep him awake ‘til you’re done? He won’t sit down and he looks like he’s about to pass out?”

 

“Get yourself some coffee and stop blabbering so I can work,” came the reply.

 

“You and me are gonna have a talk about this later,” she said, pointing at him as she walked back to the kitchen. 

 

“Women,” he muttered. Then, holding Sam’s wrist in a firm grip, “Okay, this is gonna hurt, kiddo, but you already knew that, didn’t you?” he said, removing the towel. 

 

Sam watched the man’s face with gratitude as the needle pierced his flesh. The man glanced at Sam’s eyes and the youngest Winchester held his gaze numbly.

 

The man worked in silence. At one point, Helen drifted slowly back into the room, haunting the doorway for long moments like she wasn’t sure she wanted to be there anymore. She still had blood on her sleeve.

 

When it was done, she took Sam gently by the arm and whispered, “I’ll take it from here.” As she led Sam away, the old man could hear him softly calling his brother’s name.

 

***

 

“Ellen,” Bobby whispered, leaning on the kitchen table, occasionally throwing glances at Sam. “I think I might’ve found something.”

 

Ellen stole a glance at the boy herself as he sat, catatonic, at the other end of the table.

 

“Look here,” Bobby said, pointing to a short paragraph in one of the dozens of dusty old books he’d exhumed for the express purpose of finding information about the vampires Sam and Dean had battled almost two months ago in a horrible, bloody hunt gone wrong. 

 

Very, very wrong.

 

Ellen read the passage, then looked at Bobby, knowing what he was thinking. “This isn’t your fault,” she said.

 

“No?”

 

“No.”

 

They looked at Sam, then at each other.

 

“I gave them this case,” Bobby said.

 

“Imagine. Giving hunters a case,” she said as she wiped down the table for the sixth time.

 

“They didn’t know what they were getting into, Ellen… _I_ didn’t know.”

 

She stopped, looking at him pointedly. “That’s right. _You_ didn’t know.”

 

“It’s my job to know.” He sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “I screwed up, and now… _now_ …”

 

“ _Don’t_ say it.”

 

“Ellen, how am I gonna explain that I gave them the wrong information, huh? That I sent him and his brother up to Montana in the dead of winter to fight a bunch of filthy vampires –“

 

“I don’t think you’re gonna have to worry about explaining anything for a while,” she said flatly, nodding towards Sam.

 

Bobby sighed. “It’s just that… Dean…” He shook his head. “God damn it…”

 

“ _Bobby_ -,” she warned.

 

He grunted with disdain. “Figures those bastards would find a way to mutate like the fuckin’ disease they are.”

 

Ellen went to Sam’s side and poured him some coffee. At least he was drinking today. The boy tore open a sugar packet, spilling it all over the table, barely getting any in his cup. 

 

“Sam,” she whispered as she reached for his shoulder, then thought better of it as she remembered what happened the last time she touched him. The contact had startled the traumatized hunter and he had twisted her wrist and cracked one of her ribs before Bobby sedated him.

 

Again.

 

It had been like that, every day for a month, ever since Sam returned from the Montana job.

 

Every morning, around three or four a.m., he’d shuffle down to the kitchen. He was silent most of the time, except for the occasional utterance of Dean’s name. Bobby and Ellen took turns watching him as he made his nightly vigil. Sometimes he just sat there, staring out into the middle distance like he did all day. Sometimes he drank a cup of coffee or took a leak, then went back to bed.

 

And sometimes, he put his fist through a window. 

 

 

***


End file.
